MikeP
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Posts posted by MikeP
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I am as certain as I can be after all this time, that Pay Rise spot the ball worked on the £4.80 version that had the lines fixed, before the £6 ‘upgrade’. I’m sure I remember doing it, I can remember the feature occasionally offering 480P - an amount which the £6 version just did not offer.
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6 hours ago, thealteredemu said:
What era did you play Mike?
I started playing in the £4.80 era, very much an enthusiastic amateur, would win when I knew stuff, lose when I didn’t. But I see from my time on DIF I only knew a tiny fraction of the methods that were out there, it is always interesting to learn what methods there were on the old machines!
The Ace lines emptier was the first I knew about, probably a little late in the day. It has always been my favourite, partly because it needed some skill to do it well, and also because of the scale of the thing - it worked on 7 machines, and they were literally all over the place in 1992.
The next one was Pay Rise spot the ball the next year, and I was fairly early to that party after I spotted someone doing one in a motorway services.
There were some very addictive games in the £6/£8 era, but I didn’t really have anything good after Pay Rise, until the £15 era when I used to do the Barcrest forces, some of the great JPM skill games (Arcadia was a favourite), Lotta Luck/Jackpoteers, then the Vivid method, and I always liked doing TIJ2, someone told me about the Super Cross Fire trick, but I worked out for myself how to manipulate the reels to get the super feature entry, it played very well on the £25 jackpot.
And, like many, I suspect, I lost interest in the AWP after the £25 era.
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20 hours ago, thealteredemu said:
Yes!!! This new method is playing identical to 02. It stitched me up with the forced wins after around 37 in, I'd only affected the Jackpot lines so was only taking them and the machine was flying. Without taking any wins apart from the jackpot lines I'm ahead but the machine was too buzzed so it forced the wins on me, no token wins, just single bars, then double bars and finally treble bars for a repeat. Anyway, this is feeling a lot truer now. I'm going to hunt down those other lines and fix them in the same way. Once I've completed this unhack I will upload it here for some more deeper testing if you would like to give it another blast.
J
Well, that explains why I was struggling a bit, I was taking whatever lines were offered so if you had only hacked the jackpot ones, that would explain it!
Incidentally, doing this in the emulator you can just prioritise the jackpot lines I suppose, but it wasn’t like that in the wild, as the strategy needed to be tailored to what was in the tubes. (In these games you could see what was in the cash and token tubes by looking through the reel window - max was about £80 in £1 coins, £50 in tokens (I’m sure Welcome Break services held more cause their tokens were really thin!), and some 20ps.)
20 hours ago, thealteredemu said:@MikeP By the way, this is my config for 82%
Thanks, that helps, playing with it, it seems various percentages are possible based on DIP switch 1 settings, what does the DIP switch 2 that you have set on do? I ask because none of these were set with the version I was playing with, just wanted to be sure we’re comparing like with like, if I have another go at this.
On 23/03/2024 at 23:30, thealteredemu said:PS. Thanks for giving it a go. Even if I can't get it quite like the 02 revision it's still better than playing the chipped up releases we have, especially when I port the work over to the other machines that we don't have earlier roms for. I'm especially looking at doing Pound for Pound and Hi-Flyer as these are the first ones I emptied in the wild
J
Absolutely, that is the thing of real interest. But I’m not sure the artwork is available for these either, maybe the best bet is to get access to that Pound for Pound that was recently unearthed in the abandoned arcade in Grimsby!
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7 hours ago, thealteredemu said:
@MikeP Try this Open the Box v4 hack I've been working on.
I've combined the rom so you only need to load this in as a single rom file
J
Thanks, have had a go at this, my observations:
I first did a RAM reset, its percentage is 78%, I don’t know how to change this (can anyone let me know please?), so that’s what I was running with.
I put £400 through on autoplay, mopping up easy wins myself at the end. End percentage was 84.3% so something not quite right here. Maybe accounted for by the lines it occasionally rolled in, but these should be accounted for (in the long term) in a different pot, not free, I think (if we are trying to make it like the 02 program).
I noticed several times on autoplay, when it got over generous it several times rolled 3 straight jackpots in - the 02 version didn’t do this. It reminded me of the only Ace game I played after the rechips which was Pay Rise (for Spot the Ball) this rolled in straight jackpots if it got too happy, usually 3 on the £4.80 and 2 on the £6 I think, so maybe the 04 Open the Box chip is similar to that anyway.
Then I played for the lines only, and I put £164 in for £180 out but that included a streak. Of course, that’s way over percentage, but only a modest return for an emptier. Now I did nudge in some things I shouldn’t have, I know that, and I am no way as fast nudging on the emulator now as I was back then on the actual machine, but I got the impression I was taking something that wasn’t (effectively) free because it never got mega happy, and certainly didn’t start rolling jackpots in like it did when on autoplay earlier. It also rolled some lines straight in, it shouldn’t have, if the wins were being allocated to the lines pot, as that should have been clobbered, if that makes sense.
Hope this helps!
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3 hours ago, thealteredemu said:
Also going to look i to the Sys1 Play it Again Deluxe as early £6 token versions were also emptiable via lines. We have version 03, which is the fixed version, so hoping to do this one too as it was a personal favourite as it was a lot more trickier as there were no features like Nudge Quick to make it quicker. Also only 3 max nudges to play with so you had to know roughly were the reels were landing and manipulate those. It was fairly easy once you got the hang of it as the machine would offer max nudges on almost every credit once it was behind percentage. The good thing about these ones is that it didn’t have the percentage watchdog so these don’t do those mini streaks to level out.
J
I didn’t know Play It Again could be done, I had wondered if it could (and Twilight Zone) but thought that without the 2.20 nudge time exchange it just wouldn’t be possible even if the lines could be effectively taken for free, so I never even tried. It is one I would love to have a go at should the ROMs be found, or reverse engineered, as you are proposing.
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3 hours ago, thealteredemu said:
So, as I used to play the earlier versions in the wild till they got chipped, sadly we only have Open the Box 02 with the lines trick in tact.
Past few weeks I’ve been figuring out by looking at the Open the Box 02 and comparing it with the fixed 04 programme. I started with Line 1 - Unlimited Nudges and have managed to make this line free. So will be going through all the lines and doing the same, I hope to take this over to the other clones we don’t have free lines working roms…. So Pay Rise, Pound for Pound, Camelot, Grand Prix and maybe Hi-De-Hi.
J
Really interested to see how you get on with this, I have the most nostalgia for these games, as this was the first emptier I knew. It’s a shame only the Open the Box emptiable ROMs exist, also many of the games have no DX layouts.
My recollection was that this emptier was a case of paying the lines wins (when nudged in) out of a different pot to that which awarded the wins in the first place, so if that were the case I would have thought the same fix would apply to all the lines?
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6 hours ago, Boulderdash said:
I always disagree, politely of course, with @Chopaholicon this one, but I really don't think emptiers had anything at all to do with the death of the AWP.
The reason in my mind is simple - they became gambling machines rather than amusement machines.
As soon as this happened, the jackpot had to keep up with that available first in clubs, then bookies and casinos and now the almost unlimited jackpots online. People simply aren't interested in putting beer money into a pub fruit as they know there is no amusement and £20 could last less than five minutes.
So the only people putting any money in them are addicts and a dwindling band of players.
It will be interesting to see what happens with the random digitals. Most pubs are simply getting rid, but they infest every spoons.
The reason you state is certainly part of the problem with AWPs. But I don’t think it is the totality of it.
Interesting as you say as to where the random digital games go. You mention Wetherspoons, and this is interesting, they have a very clever business model to keep prices low for beer and food, and I’m sure fruit machines are part of it. The beer maybe 60% of the price of their competitors but the value to the player from the percentage on their gaming machines certainly isn’t. Easy money from those who want to play them, to help them keep beer and food prices low.
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7 hours ago, Dougsta said:
Off and On wouldn't be enough on most games, as they don't all tell you the specific revision when booting. One thing I heard of was on some games you could see a sticker/plate they added once an update had been done, if you looked between the reels. Could be urban myth.
Pros often bought and sold info between themselves, especially once they were done with an area. Visit, rob the machines, then sell the trick to a local for £200, since you'll never be back. Personally I just subtly observed others on games, especially if they looked like they knew what they were doing. I got the Jackpoteers trick that way, for one. Other stuff I worked out for myself, like optimal strategies on JPMs and certain Barcrests with a fixed streak cycle (Revolution, Gold Strike etc).
Yes, on some machines you could see the actual rom chip through the reels, and it did have a sticker on it saying what version it was. Jackpoteers was one such machine, I remember. There were so many different versions of that one!
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8 hours ago, monkeyboypaul said:
I'm curious to know:
Who discovered the exploits? Was it a particular type of person, interest group (computer code nerd) or age demographic? I was 'only' 15 in 1995, and far more interested in girls and beer than deconstructing fruit machine programming! I noticed a lot of older 30+ players who must've been able to spot patterns and had the deeper pockets to follow through. I'd take no more than £20 out for a gamble back then, often much less. Spoke to Mr P last year, he said he'd take £100-150 out each time back then! Was it arcade employees who'd see this stuff day in, day out, and then pass it on?
Did these people purposefully set out to find the exploits? Did they have access to a machine, or hit a specific arcade who got machines early - which must've cost them hundreds initially! Or was it a lucky stumble? Example, referring to @Chopaholic video below - how does someone know that the £6 win is free on SuperPot, or that it comes from the streak pot? There's no visual indicator, no live view of the drift? how?!
How information was documented & passed on? We're talking very early internet days. Mobile phones aren't common. Was any particular location a hotspot for this - the South East maybe? I lived in Skeggy and we knew fuck all. It was all word of mouth.
How did players check for new chip versions in machines like SuperPots? Discretely switch it off and on again?
I'd love to know what I was missing!
As for the death of AWP - my interest waned at £15jp, I started to lose too often, and too much, plus I moved to the city & nightclubs happened. You'd still find the odd older machine in them, so i'd still dabble and often do ok (compared to the crowds who didn't grow up in arcades!).
Very good questions, and maybe as an amateur rather than a pro player, I can offer an answer.
The absolute first thing you needed to know is that these methods existed in the first place. Seems silly to say that, but until I found out about the Ace lines method, it would never have even occurred to me that any such method was possible. So this would have been 1992, I even remember where it was. Knutsford services on the M6. There were a few Ace games and I was playing an Open The Box 4.80 as you would normally play it, get double bars, exchange and nudge fast for the jackpot. While celebrating my win (on a machine which didn’t have many tokens in it, wonder why?) a couple of guys playing the machines next to mine, told me (bragging) I was playing it wrong there was a ‘system’, no more than that, but I noticed one of them had taken line 6 off nudge time - the mystery win in 20p’s. Weird. So I watched players on future occasions doing this and figured it out that the lines were free.
So once you know that such methods existed, I would look out for them. I played a lot in motorway services at the time and knew the games, so anyone doing anything unusual attracted my attention. That might mean taking one feature win only, playing to lose, refusing to take obvious wins, and losing body language like shaking the head, or swearing, while actually winning. I watched those people very carefully and subtly. And then figured it out on my own at a later date - Pay Rise spot the ball came my way that way…
Later on, 2000’s, I knew a local pro player, who would give me some good info, in exchange for locations in pubs in the local area that had certain machines. Not necessarily emptiers, but good stuff nonetheless, you couldn’t get off the internet at the time. Vivids. Numbering. Something on Golden Dragon. The Italian Job 2 - the tip off was Super Cross Fire, but I developed the method myself, with manipulation of the reels using holds for when the next win was ‘due’’, and was actually quite profitable.
I never knew even a third of the methods when I played, it is clear from videos on YouTube, there were many more than I knew about, I didn’t know about the Maygay Super Pots one, for example, so it is interesting to learn now about the ones that I didn’t know about at the time.
Cheers
Mike
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23 hours ago, serene02 said:
Ace carried on releasing machines way after the lines issue, in fact they released some later £10/£15 jackpot that could be emptied from certain features exploits, even games like Caesars' Palace could be emptied in certain situations as well as Pot of Gold and maybe Robin Hood. They still released games on £25 jackpot. They are not around any longer but I'm pretty sure they didn't stop until early 2000's.
I don't think AWP died due to emptiers, ultimately I believe it's a combination of jackpot value and gameplay. Games became boring as there was little scope for any real game depth or skill involved. I'd probably still have a dabble if the jackpot was capped at £10/£15 with the chance of a streak etc.
J
Yes, agreed, Ace did release machines in the £15/£25 era - and some very playable machines too. But there weren’t that many about, compared to their machines in the £4.80 era which were absolutely everywhere, so there was definitely a realignment in the later 1990s away from Ace, and towards Barcrest, Maygay and JPM.
Agree about the gameplay and jackpot value issue. It turned the games from AWP to pure gambling, and the random digital ones do that better, I guess. But this is the thing, I now want to play old games on MFME with the gameplay more than I want to play £100 random games in pubs for the gambling hit (and don’t even mention FOBTs!).
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When I was an amateur player back in the day, while I was a member at the CMA and Arcadia sites (remember them?), the good stuff never came from them but from players I met on my travels. But I tended to get it late. But I ask the question now as someone who certainly won when I had knowledge, and lost when I didn’t. Who profited from emptiers? Some players, obviously, and occasionally I was one.
But the bigger picture, starting way back 1992, ACE certainly seemed to lose massive market share after the ACE lines debacle. So they lost. And are now extinct.
Barcrest - what were they on, that they couldn’t properly fix Lotta Luck, Jackpoteers and the rest, was there a need for some players to be seen to win by the industry around this time, it would explain a lot…
I’ve learnt from watching @Chopaholic excellent videos about the horror show of the emptiers in the £70 era - horrific, I had stopped playing these games by then, thankfully.
But in the end, did the compensated AWP die out because of emptiers? And if so when? I’d be interested in your thoughts.
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My most memorable day from touring the services to play fruit machines was from - it must have been 1993 I think. Ace lines was over by then, but Pay Rise spot the ball was in play, and I seemed to have got wind of this one early. So off down the M5, and to Taunton Deane, no less, had a Pay Rise and I took about £70 cash and £20 tokens out of it. I wandered over the bridge to see what was on offer Northbound, nothing, came back, and the arcade area was closed, engineers doing something to it, so I headed off down to Exeter to see if there was anything playable there. There wasn’t. So I headed back north and stopped again at Taunton Deane, I crossed the bridge and only found the engineers had totally filled Pay Rise up again - you could see through the reels the coin and token tubes in them days - so I emptied it again! Nice!
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A couple of questions about MFME, first how do you reset the counts on money in and out? Second, I’ve read that the later versions of the emulator (I have v 20.1) can autoplay games, how do you get it to do this? (It would be good to have each game in a random state rather than how you left it last time, is all).
Thanks in advance
Mike
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12 hours ago, wearecity said:
My experience of service station fruit machines, are losing on 70% average payout machines.
But they do bring back lots of memories of days out and holidays with my mate.
I'm not a driver, so don't really know the name and positions myself, but my mate used to map them out where we would stop. I can hear him saying, we'll stop at Keele and Chievelys, that you mentioned, on our trips to Blackpool, Manchester, Alton Towers etc to and from London.
I'm pretty sure it's down south, but Clacketts (sp???), was one he mentioned a few times.
Clackett Lane - south M25, probably.
9 hours ago, Boulderdash said:Yeah that was me, sorry.
I was a student at Keele from 89-93 and made a small fortune at the services. They used to have pinball games in there too, and some like Super Mario Bros didn't seem to be clever enough to raise the replay score, so once we got good at it we could spend all day on it for £1, constantly getting free games.
Forgiven!
Pinballs tended to have fixed replay scores back then, I have one from the era (High Speed - sadly no longer works) and that had fixed replay scores.
Re the fruits back then, the general advice was to avoid the M6 - I travelled on it often to visit my folks, and I often didn’t heed that advice!
M4 and M5 had far fewer pro players, I think.
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Hey folks!
It is a long time ago now, but when I did play fruit machines in anger, motorway services were part of the thing, big time.
Who else has experiences in these places, there must be some of you?
When I found out about the Ace lines emptier, admittedly shortly before they were all re-chipped!, there were no less than 11 such games in Keele services on the M6 (including north and southbound). They were all nearly empty, by the way - no easy money for me there. But over the years I played fruit machines a lot in the motorway services, and did quite well in the Barcrest force era, and the JPM sklll area in the early 2000s. Regular at Chievely and Membury on the M4 in those days.
Any good stories about playing fruit machines in the services?? I have a good one but I’ll hold it back for now!
Which service stations were good or bad for you?
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Hey folks, just spent the afternoon trawling through the legacy area, and there’s some good stuff there for sure, best pick is the DX of Arabian Nights - this was the first of a series of Barcrest ‘force’ machines, but actually I played it rarely - at that time there were loads of Red Hot Knights and Neptune’s Treasures near me, but hardly any Arabian Nights. I love the shift from ‘Nights’ to ‘Knights’ by Barcrest in the clone that was to follow!
In that era, I was winning overall, so enjoyment came down to the sound samples of the various games, as I spent so much time on them. I loved Neptune’s treasure and hated Monty Pythons Flying Circus, even though they were the exact same game, and I won on both equally! There is a big difference between playing fruit machines for profit and for entertainment, read losing, though. I’ve done both, but it was all a long time ago, but really great to be able to pick up the positive parts of that here on Desert Island Fruits!
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5 hours ago, woodsy said:
post away, anything you like and i'm sure with another few posts and threads you've read you'll start putting the topics in the right places, and if not so be it, we all make mistakes!! i'm renowned for my errors when releasing layouts so don't worry buddy!! nice to have a similar minded soul in the community
Thanks @woodsy and others for the welcome, much appreciated!
Playing King Kebab after all these years has made me wonder what was it about these machines? Just before the pandemic, I only gambled a few times a year in the casino, I’d kicked the occasional habit of FOBTs (an utter abomination but one for another day), then covid struck and I didn’t gamble a single pound for 1.25 years.
Since then, I have played the random slots in pubs nowadays occasionally, and either won or, more usually, lost quite big sums of money very quickly. And the gameplay is non-existent, the relevant sound effects, if indeed the operators have permitted them to make a sound, are limited to a clunk when a symbol you might get 3 of lands in view.
So contrast King Kebab, then, on MFME. Without the gambling element, that is the key point. Gameplay, player involvement, skill stops, reel stops, decisions to be made, great sound samples, and some humour in the theme of the game. What made the old games good was not just the gamble, it was the whole experience. Did that make them more addictive than FOBTs? I think not but am not quite sure why I think that. Maybe the FOBTs tap into something different in the human psyche.
When I played King Kebab ‘in the wild’ it was always the £15 jackpot version, unlike the £25 jackpot version I have been playing on MFME. The change from £15 to £25 jackpot was, I think, the beginning of the end for the AWP fruit machine, it was certainly the period I gradually lost interest, one for another post I think…but jackpot £25, second prize £10?
Hey still, at least I get to try out the features, never did when playing this one in the day, just forced the King Kebab mega feature on the £15 version, could go for £75. Actually it was a step back towards Temple of Treasure for Barcrest, after Party Animal which I think was released before King Kebab, which didn’t favour the super top feature force, if I’m remembering correctly.
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I’m new here, and it has been a while since I posted my introduction for reasons below, not sure if this should be a new topic, so moderators please move it if not!
It has taken me a while to get MFME running, and this is on a new laptop I bought for the purpose (all the rest of my tech is Apple, and after wrestling with windows 10, I’m more than ever going to stick with Apple tech if I can!
Anyway, having got signed up here on Desert Island Fruits, I then couldn’t download the installation because of ‘security’ as my computer had Windows 10 S mode. Repeated attempts to switch it out of S mode failed, and eventually, after consulting the internet for advice, I had to reinstall Windows. Shocking this on a new laptop, I had to reinstall the operating system to be able to run the program I had bought the thing for. Anyway, that did fix it, I removed S mode, and installed MFME.
Really impressed so far, my first download was Arcadia - as if you were playing the actual machine, but I’ve completely forgotten after 20 odd years how to play it, and my attempts to hit Shoot Em Up were woeful! Next up King Kebab, and playing this for an hour or so, well, it gives me some thoughts about fruit machines back then, compared to what is on offer in pubs now, I’ll post these thoughts but not sure as a newbie which thread to post them in?
Best regards,
Mike
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ACE COIN - BAND AID FREE WIN HACK
in The Laboratory
Posted · Edited by MikeP
I haven’t. But then, I haven’t played the £6 versions much in MFME (with the exception of Pay Rise which is the 01 program with spot the ball). I never liked the £6 program, obviously the lines were fixed by that point, but also the Nudge TIme feature was ruined for the £6 versions - just another example of a jackpot upgrade ruining game play of previously good games.
Wasn’t the big streak chipped out at some point? The recent video by @Chopaholic suggested it was. Maybe an experiment with autoplay might settle the issue?